It Boils Down to This
by I Was NotA Robot
Summary: Girl is fast. Too fast for boy. He reaches out to her, but she runs, runs into the light. (In which Bree Davenport is too fast for her own good, and it falls to pieces from here).
1. Blink of an Eye

**Summary: Girl is fast. Too fast for boy. He reaches out to her, but she runs, runs into the light. (In which Bree Davenport is too fast for her own good, and it falls to pieces from here).**

 **Inspiration: WARNING: This was written late at night. Proceed with caution. Based very loosely Wally West from Young Justice died, and theorized from the idea that a speedster's speed could legitimately destroy them.**

 **It's sort of Brase, whether romantic or platonic, up for interpretation.**

* * *

She thinks it has something to do with puberty.

Her hair brushes past her chin, and her body is muscular and lean. She's grown several inches in height, and can handle weapons and foreign languages nearly half as well as Chase.

After years of the terrible gangly limbs and red skin and teenage awkwardness, she blossoms and truly _evolves._ But she didn't expect this. Bree is the fastest human on earth.

Now she is even faster.

As her brothers grew older, their abilities grew stronger as well. The Brawn can now crush fighter jets with his pinky, and the Brain has extended his forte into telepathy. But this – is something entirely different.

She can move without sound, and could outrun the speed of light on her good days. Coordination is a given, but unnecessary. Even those with the quickest of reflexes are in slow motion these days. Mission? A breeze. Chase and Davenport theorize that her cells have either mutated, or become a new thing altogether. This doesn't matter to Bree too much.

Life is good.

* * *

Running is a miraculous sensation now. She can feel herself moving, really _moving._ Her the world around her is frozen solid, sluggish and choppy compared to her pulse that is always with her.

It is a marvelous feeling.

* * *

When the first real problem occurs, it is a sunny day.

They've just uncovered evidence of hostages in Liberia, and she rushes off to tell Donald the news.

She is a blur, and she is alive.

She almost makes back to the base (which is on the other side of the planet). Almost.

Within five miles of the island, her arms begins to unravel.

There is no blood, no tissue, and no white bone peeking out from slivered strips of shredded skin. Only blinding white light, and the feeling that her head is going to burst. Her focus is lost, and Bree begins to sink into the blue and green crest of waves. The water is past her waist, past her shoulders, approaching her chin -

She starts to scream.

* * *

"The amount of energy you created was starting to affect the matter in your body. You were starting to erode at an alarming pace - even your endurance and stamina couldn't keep up with it. But it's more than that."

Donald leaned over the edge of his computer and looked her straight in the eyes. "You were running so fast that you disrupted the current dimension."

"Time, space, all wibbly wobbly stuff." she grinned, patting her bandaged arm. "The healing factor is kicking in, and all is well. It's all fine now." she assured him. Donald Davenport shook his head solemnly, a grave expression set on his face that Bree had never seen.

"This is serious, Bree. If something like this happens again, you could wink out of existence, maybe even cease to have ever existed. Everything around you would be affected - if an object or a person was exposed to the energy you were producing, it could disappear entirely. This is dangerous stuff we're dealing with."

After she leaves the room, dejected, her brother catches her arm as she walks through the doorway.

"Chase?"

* * *

"I read the file. Davenport recorded data on your current state, and I think that it would be best if you…stayed behind for a while."

"What?"

"This could be serious. I don't want you to be hurt – I talked to Douglas, and I recommended that you temporarily be taken off of the -"

Her fierce glare is enough to shut him up, but he doesn't need to finish the sentence. Naturally, she is furious.

"How dare you!" she seethed. "I can take care of MYSELF, thank you very much, and I don't need anyone else trying to mess up my career!"

She knew she hurt his feelings, but she was too angry to care. He doesn't try to point that that this isn't a _career,_ it's a _lifestyle._

Too many things are left unsaid between the girl and the lonely boy in the hallway.

* * *

It's been a month since their little family 'talk' went down, and now she's back on the field.

She feels greater than ever.

"Bree, be careful! You're not ready yet, it's -"

Bree ignored him and shoved her communicator back into her belt. _Here goes nothing._

She catapulted swiftly over the metal panels and onto the ground below. The moment her foot made contact with the cement floor, electricity crackled in her veins, and her pulse thumped along to the beat.

She took out the henchmen in under three seconds. All ninety-seven of them.

"You were saying, Don?"

* * *

Bree is faster than the flutter of an eyelash now.

In sparring matches, Adam can't keep up, speed and unlimited energy clashing with power and strength. She's winning more and more frequently, and less and less narrowly.

Chase can't match her combat moves even with multiple forms of martial arts. He may be the brains, but who runs this team?

" _Me."_

* * *

"A bomb. In Central Park."

"Alright."

"I want you to speed Chase over there – he'll disarm it."

She knows Chase is going to complain about riding piggyback the whole way there, so she tunes him out as she skims over the top of the water, and mentally hums as they speed through the states.

He unhooks his arms from her shoulders and unwraps his legs from her waist only when they catch sight of the bomb. It is a large hunk of metal, hardly bigger than a washing machine, with all sorts of dials and levers. Next to it, connected by a twisted plastic wire, is a crackling and buzzing laptop which Chase immediately attends to.

He scans the screen, and his fingers flit across the keyboard in a blur.

"How're you doing?" Bree calls from her position as a 'watch guard'. There isn't anything to really watch for, except for the possible stray cat stuck in a tree. Clock Man, or Pendulum, or whatever this supervillain calls himself, is long gone, vanishing among the sea of faces of past and future adversaries.

"Unless the power source miraculously disappears, then these bugs will be positioned all over the world."

* * *

The clock connected to the bomb laughs at them.

* * *

 _Tick, tock. Tick, tock._

* * *

 _._

 _._

 _._

"Chase, hurry!"

"I – I can't. The system is overriding everything!"

.

.

.

* * *

 _Tick. Tick._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _Boom._

* * *

"It's too late. The nanobots have already been distributed in the air – there's no way to destroy them now. We can't even _see_ them. And there are billions – soon, they'll travel across countries, continents – the whole world."

He punches the machine in frustration.

Nothing. Bree thinks back a few minutes.

 _Unless the power source miraculously disappears._ She has it.

"I can do it."

"What?"

"I'll fix the problem, Chase. I can do it." Bree told him eagerly, glancing at him with a fond expression. "Tell Adam I'm sorry. And you'll forgive me, I hope?" she asked, not quite waiting for an answer. Whether he does or not can't matter anymore. She loves him with all her heart and a little more, but this is her job. This is her destiny. Chase's eyes began to widen in realization.

She feels oddly calm. Her brother begins to shake his head frantically. "Mr. Davenport -"

"Screw him. We're heroes. It's up to us to save the world."

"No, not like this." he begged. "Please."

* * *

The boy was desperate, and the girl was determined.

 _I love you. I love you. I love you._

He yelled at her and screamed at her, until his throat was hoarse and she couldn't bear to look at him.

She turned away and started to run.

* * *

It might be her imagination, but she swears that she can feel her skin peeling away from her bones.

The heat, the _heat_ is unbearable, and something is rising up from her chest toward her head, threatening to erupt from her jaws. Her body is full of fire, burning, stinging, kicking and screaming at her insides. She knows she has to stop, otherwise she'll go down burning, but she _can't._

Because there is a world out there, a beautiful world full of things that are hideous and wonderful and everything in between, and now it's going to end but Bree can't let that happen. All she can do is keep running, running, running toward nothing.

It's all coming down to this final bound now, this single motion that must be fluid and a million times faster than lightening - a movement that will be invisible to the human eye. It all comes down to this.

Blinding white light dances in her vision, and she manages a brief smile and wink in Chase's _(the boy's, her boy's)_ direction.

And then she is gone.

* * *

.

.

.

 _fin_


	2. Flashpoint Paradox

Eventually, they found the man behind all of this, behind all of the clocks and deathtraps. Behind the demise of a sister. He was a self-proclaimed supervillain – in reality, he was simply a terrorist with a god-complex. He called himself the Time Taker. How fitting.

* * *

" _She left."_

" _She underestimated her own power, and that was what destroyed her."_

" _No. Her mistake was leaving. Her mistake was leaving me alone WITH YOU!"_

" _CHASE, NO!"_

" _This isn't what she would've wanted, Chase. Put him down. Put him -"_

" _SHE'S GONE, AND SHE'S NEVER COMING BACK! I'LL KILL HIM, I'LL KILL HIM, I'LL -"_

* * *

The Time Taker suddenly went limp, as if he was a marionette who'd just had his strings snapped. A thin trail of blood trickled from his ear, and Chase knew that from the silence of the room the Time Taker would never take again.

The man sits in an empty cell now, alone. He is still alive. His body is sustained through tubes and careful health procedures. He will live.

According to the doctors, he is braindead. Alive, but useless.

He is disposed of, and Chase is satisfied.

* * *

Adam is training as hard as ever, throwing dummies around the room and deflecting lasers with his hands. His brother watched him with sullen eyes.

"There isn't even a body left to bury." Chase said under his breath. He looked up at Adam. "We didn't even have time to say goodbye. Bree's… _gone_."

"Who's Bree?" Adam asked.

* * *

" _This is serious, Bree. If something like this happens again, you could wink out of existence, maybe even cease to have ever existed. This is dangerous stuff we're dealing with."_

* * *

It goes on like this for weeks. Slowly, media references to Bree Davenport cease, and posters or pictures of her begin to fade away – replaced by something else. Chase is horrified that the world could forget the girl who fought for it – who died for it – so easily, and so completely. Unnaturally.

Something isn't right here.

There is no more mourning, no more banners, and no more tear-stained faces. Everything slowly shifts back to normal, and the world spins itself around, and around, and around. Perfectly in order - too perfectly.

* * *

"Douglas!" he called. The man turned around, keys in hand. "We're forgetting something."

Douglas Davenport scratched his head thoughtfully and frowned.

"I know. I thought I locked back door before we left, but now I'm not so sure…."

"No, Douglas. It has to do with the explosion in New York."

"Oh – I've been meaning to talk to you about that, but it slipped my mind. We picked up some video feed from nearby long-range security cameras installed close by. My sensors picked up some weird energy being emitted from around the machine – how did you say you destroyed it again? The energy was indescribably powerful, and when I identified it, I couldn't believe it. It could be dangerous." he disclosed, stepping into the car and shutting the door. Douglas glanced out of the window, a flicker of concern in his eyes. Chase shook his head.

"I'll – I'll explain later. But I want to know about that energy. The white light"

"That white light you saw? It's a crack, a crack in our dimension. The fourth dimension is space, and I could guess that there are tens of thousands of further dimensions that we can't even comprehend. Any object or particle of matter affected by this flicker would immediately be erased, from time and physical reality. We wouldn't be able to remember anything that slipped into the gap, simply because...it never existed in the first place.

"To be able to physically exist in them would defy all laws of science and physics – we could mess around with superposition, time travel, teleportation, and a million other things. But it's best that we keep things under lock and key. We wouldn't want any panic, now would we?" he grinned. The motor roared to life, and Chase watched as the car backed out of the driveway and down the road, headed for the landing strip.

* * *

Something inside him has switched back on, and he hurries back into Donald's office. Approaching the screen with keyboard in hand, he swallows back his doubts. He still remembers her just fine - every detail, every moment, every laugh.

Why doesn't anybody else?

That doesn't matter now, not when there are important things at stake.

Bree Davenport is not dead. Perhaps she is trapped in some strange world, pocket dimension, or another planet. Maybe she traveled back in time to the age of the dinosaurs – maybe she's started over, saving the world all over again. Maybe.

Chase hit _play_ on the video recorder, and white light exploded on the screen.

* * *

.

.

.

.

Boy searches for girl. He never finds her.

Things pass, and things change.

Man looks for girl. He still does not find her.

Years pass, and people change.

He does. But his mission never differs. He has not found her yet, and fate has proclaimed that he never will. It isn't meant to be.

But he will never stop trying.

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _._

 _After all, he's got all the time in the world._

* * *

 _fin_


	3. Thanks for the Light

**I'm sorry. This isn't an actual new chapter. I apologize; I usually hate when this stuff happens. But the story is finished, and it's very…vague. Hehe.**

* * *

 **I'd just like to clarify.**

 **Why did Chase, out of all the people in the world, remember her? Maybe it was because of his enormous brain capacity, or perhaps it was because of his strong emotional attachment. For all I know, it could be for an entirely different reason. It's up to you.**

 **Why did everyone forget about Bree? It is explained in the second chapter. If you didn't notice, look carefully. There is a legitimate reason, not just because a lot of people are ungrateful and forgetful.**

 **Because if everyone actually forgot about Bree, like, they just didn't care about a girl who saved all of them and basically sacrificed herself, then that would be just so…so angsty. I would not be able to deal with it. I would break my computer and curse myself for writing such things.**

 **Honestly.**

* * *

 **Why is this useless excuse for an 'update' really up here?**

 **I want to thank you all for reading, following, favoriting, and most of all, reviewing. It means so much to me. Bubbles43679 took the time to PM me and basically assure me that I wasn't a complete failure when it came to writing, and I'd like to thank them for that.**

 **Thank you.**

 **And thank you to you guys as well.**

 **So long, dear readers. Until next time.**

 **\- Ella**


	4. I'm Rebooting It, If You Care

**Hello, again.**

 **My. This is awkward.**

 **I just thought that I'd let you know that there's an alternate version of this story posted on wattpad under the username like_a_lonely_house. I will also be posting a condensed version on my account here, like one big jumbled mess of words, romantic phrases, and tangled plot lines.**

 **I was looking it over, and I thought that it would be interesting to rewrite this story – I thought it might have potential, and it'd be something to play around with, especially since there's that new Lab Rats: Elite Force or whatever that came out. So that's exactly what I did – I basically rebooted it. This new version is a bit different - it's blatantly Brase/really really shippy, and with an actual defined plot (with, ahem, multiple chapters, hopefully). Check it out if you're interested.**


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